Cuba Study Group

Fidel Castro’s comment to a visiting U.S. journalist that Cuba’s economic system doesn’t work is the strongest signal yet that the communist island is looking to private enterprise and foreign investment to bolster growth. Read More

Alan Gross usually celebrates Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year that started at sundown Wednesday, by playing mandolin in the klezmer band that accompanies his guitar-strumming rabbi in the High Holiday service. Read More

There were many odd things about my recent Havana stopover (apart from the dolphin show, which I'll get to shortly), but one of the most unusual was Fidel Castro's level of self-reflection. I only have limited experience with Communist autocrats (I have more experience with ... Read More

HAVANA -- Fidel Castro criticized Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for what he called his anti-Semitic attitudes and questioned his own actions during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 during interviews with an American journalist he summoned to Havana to discuss fears o... Read More

Nokia Oyj, AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. are urging the U.S. government to ease rules that keep them from operating in Cuba even after President Read More

The Cuban Enterprise Fund is modeled after the successful enterprise funds created by the Support for Eastern European Democracy Act of 1989, following the fall of the Berlin wall. Its purpose, like that of previous funds, is to assist in the development of private enterprise by providing equity investments, loans, technical assistance, training, and other forms of assistance to truly independent businesses within host nations. Read More

In April of 2005, the Cuba Study Group joined over 30 organizations from 7 different countries at the first Annual Conference of the International Group for Social Corporate Responsibility in Madrid, Spain. At that conference the 35 organizations that were represented, including independent labor unions and non-profit organizations from around the world, unanimously approved a resolution condemning the Cuban regime's systematic violation of internationally recognized labor standards and agreed to form the International Group for Social Corporate Responsibility in Cuba. Read More

The power of Internet technology and social media to fuel economic growth, enhance communication and expand educational opportunities is, without doubt, one of the legacies of the last quarter century. However, while Internet technology and social media have helped increase communication and grow the economies of developed nations and some emerging nations, others have fallen behind and into an ever-expanding technology gap. If access to basic healthcare and education were the determining factors for development in the past, access to technology may very well be the determining factor for this generation. Read More

This Cuba Study Group sponsored project is aimed towards assisting Cubans on the island by providing them with the know-how, the resources and the conditions to setup and operate their own small businesses as soon as Cuban law permits. Read More

In April of 2005, the Cuba Study Group joined over 20 other organizations in a project aimed at uniting the Cuban diaspora along a series of basic principles. The result of this effort is Consenso Cubano, a plural gathering space for refection, conciliation and concord among Cuban organizations. The Pilares para un Consenco Cubano, a series of fundamental areas of agreement among member organizations, constitutes the foundation and framework of reference for Consenso Cubano. The Cuba Study Group is a founding member of Conseso Cubano. Read More

A whitepaper released by the Cuba Study Group in collaboration with the Latin America Initiative at the Brookings Institution and the Americas Society/Council of the Americas in July 2010. The report summarizes the conclusions of the Cuba IT and Social Media Initiative, a pr...

A December 2008 white paper release by the Cuba Study Group advocating for the unilateral lifting of all restrictions on travel and remittances to Cuba by U.S. nationals. ...

A Cuba Study Group proposal for the creation of a Cuban Enterprise Fund to assist in the development of private small and medium size businesses in Cuba through equity investments, loans, technical assistance, training, and other forms of assistance. ...

The Cuba Study Group's September 2006 White Paper outlining its initiative to unleash micro-economic reforms in Cuba and offer million in micro-credits to entrepreneurs in Cuba. ...

A white paper prepared by the Cuba Study Group in March of 2006 which outlines a conditional engagement policy aimed at making change in Cuba more likely and substantive. The proposal conditions the reform of specific U.S. policies on substantive and permanent reforms by th...

At the end of 2008 I published a text here titled “The Year of Yoani,” where I detailed the distinctions and achievements of the famous blogger up to that time. I realized, then, that nine was her lucky number and 2009 was also overwhelming, particularly with the mention in ... Again, Yoani">Read More

I’ve made quite an effort not to write about Fidel Castro. First, because I’m not capable of saying anything serious about his persona (sometimes I would like to take him less lightly); second, because reading his “Reflections” has the same affect on me as do some science fi... Twenty Years">Read More

Following the universal law of Cuban telephone lines, after the downpour on Wednesday my phone died. “No line,” was the post-mortem note, in English, on the little handset screen. On Thursdays we reported the outage several times because, as the experts say, the more reports... Urban Paranoias">Read More

At last! The punishment for my neighbor and friend Juan Juan Almeida was lifted, and he will be embraced by his wife and daughter. I’m not going to tell the story that all of you already know, but then I ask, and I can not find the logic: why did the gove... ¡Buen viaje! – ¡Bon voyage – Safe journey!">Read More

On Monday, August 16, at 6:45 AM, the political police burst into my house to detain me. I was forced to sit in a chair in the lobby, where everyone passed by, of the police station in San German for thirteen hours. It was a punishment, I was nauseated, I had a const... Thirteen Hours of Punishment">Read More